Jessica Peterson, book artist, letterpress printer, and graphic designer is the owner of The Southern Letterpress in New Orleans. She holds an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama and a BFA from The School of Art Institute of Chicago.

This book is an attempt to catalog Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea ten years after it closed, based on memories of people who visited the museum and newspaper archives. Ma’Cille House (d. 1999), whose formal education ended in 7th grade, began collecting miscellanea in the 1950s, including such things as dug-up bottles, dolls, farm implements, taxidermy, and fossils. After she had raised seven children, she established her museum, in the early 1960s, on a rural back road near Gordo, Alabama. By the time the museum closed forty years later, it was world famous – a multi-building institution visited by thousands of people. In 1998, the Ma’Cille’s family, facing the costs of assisted living care for her, and other financial burdens, auctioned off the museum’s contents. The story of the museum was preserved through stories that circulated about Gordo. Drawings by Glenn House, Sr. Letterpress printed on textblock cotton rag handmade paper from Alabama clay-colored t-shirts. Book contains pull-outs, including one printed memento from Ma’Cille’s. Paper covered boards with exposed stab binding. Laid in a printed four-flap paper folder. Issued in paper slipcase. Edition of thirty copies. Rare Books copy is number 6, signed by the compilar, who also researched, wrote and designed it.

From the introduction: “In the fall of 1959, the public schools of Prince Edward County, Virginia were closed in response to a court order to desegregate. The schools remained closed for five years. Many white children began attending a system of private schools established by the Prince Edward School Foundation. As permitted by state law, tuition for these schools was almost completely subsidized by the government. No one elected to attend the private academy for black students organized by the same group of white leaders…lawsuits about the intersection of public education and race circulated through the state and federal courts. Edition of one hundred copies. Rare Books copy is no. 81.